The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of Petunia plant, which originated from the crossing of a Petunia hybrid variety called ‘9Pt-27a’ as the female parent and ‘P59d-C10’ as the male parent.
The Petunia is a very popular plant used for flower bedding and potting in the summer season. There are only a few Petunia varieties that do not have an upright growth habit and that have a high resistance to rain, heat, and diseases. Petunias of the ‘Revolution’ series include ‘Revolution Purple pink’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 6,915), ‘Revolution Brilliant pink’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 6,914), ‘Revolution Brilliantpink-Mini’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 6,899), and ‘Revolution Blue vein’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 9,322). These are decumbent type plants having long stems, a lower plant height, abundant branching, and a high resistance to heat, rain and disease. However, there are only a few Petunia varieties having a decumbent and compact plant shape, a great profusion of small size flowers, white petals and a high resistance to rain, heat, and disease. Accordingly, this invention was aimed at obtaining a new Petunia variety having white petals, together with the above features.
The female parent ‘9Pt-27a’ (unpatented) used in the crossing of ‘Suncopaho’ is a strain of our breeding lines, having a spreading growth habit with many branches. It has medium size single flowers, the petals having a yellowish white color.
The male parent ‘P59d-C10’ (unpatented) used in the crossing of ‘Suncopaho’ is a strain of our breeding lines, having a decumbent growth habit with many branches. It has small single flowers, the petals having a yellowish white color.
In July 2000, crossing of ‘9Pt-27a’ as the female parent and ‘P59d-C10’ as the pollen parent was conducted at Yokaichi-shi, Shiga-ken, Japan. In April 2001, 80 seedlings were obtained from that crossing. These seedlings were grown in pots in glasshouses and were evaluated. One seedling was selected in view of its growth habit, flower size and color in September 2001. That seedling was propagated by cutting and a trial was carried out by flower potting and bedding from April to September 2002 at Yokaichi-shi, Shiga-ken, Japan. The botanical characteristics of that plant were then examined, using similar varieties ‘Revolution White’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 8,768) and ‘Sunchiffon’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 15,024) for comparison. As a result, it was concluded that this Petunia plant is distinguishable from any other variety, whose existence is known to us, and is uniform and stable in its characteristics. The new variety of Petunia plant was named ‘Suncopaho’.
In the following description, the color-coding is in accordance with the Horticultural Colour Chart of The Royal Horticultural Society, London, England (R.H.S. Colour Chart).